Final Exam

Good news! Everybody passed the final exam.

Small problem: Some people lost 10 points because they didn't pay attention to the instructions for the last question, which was worth 25 : "Write 30-50 words." One person wrote 116 words and another only wrote only 22 words! The highest score was 97.5 (several people could have gotten 100, but lost ten points because of wordiness).

When you take a test, please pay close attention to the instructions. That way you can avoid losing points for silly mistakes.

Crossword Puzzle Posted

The crossword puzzle posted has been posted on the school's website as a ZIP file. Have fun! You can download the software for PC or Mac. If you are rich enough to own an iPad/iPhone, I believe that version 3.0 of the Litsoft crossword software will run on your smartphone.

Whodunit-Review-sanxbaell.zip is here!

Sequitur Exercises

I have uploaded two Sequitur exercises to the school's course website:

Whodunit-1-OK.seq & Whodunit-2-OK.seq 

Vocabulary Review Crossword Puzzle

I have uploaded a vocabulary review crossword puzzle called
Whodunit-Review-sanxbaell.puz 

The puzzle is on our school's course website (竹進院二技應英系三A進階英文閱讀技巧之教材) at

iq.cute.edu.tw

All of the computers in B107 already have the necessary AcrossLite software. If you want to install AcrossLite on your home or office computer, you can download the software from the New York Times website:

Final Exam Preparation - 1

Timelines are a very good way to summarize many stories. Without looking at The Inverted Eagle, try to remember the names of the main characters. Then look at this list of chapter titles:

1 -- The Scene of the Crime

2 -- Three Interviews

3 -- The Hospital

4 -- The Suspect

5 -- Family Secrets

6 -- The Arrest

From memory, try to make a timeline (or 7 timelines) of the main events in this story both BEFORE Ellie arrived (#0 = the events before the story started) and after she began to interview all of the suspects (#1 ~ #6). Write everything in English without checking your vocabulary or grammar. After you finish writing, proofread your work for missing or incorrect details, then check your vocabulary, grammar and spelling. Work with a partner: friendly competition will make your review more pleasurable and both of you will learn even more.

Cross-Sentence Game (Review for 'The Inverted Eagle)

Today we reviewed The Inverted Eagle by playing a Creative Commons licensed game: The Cross-Sentence Game. The object of the game was to accumulate points by creating sentences that refer to this story. The three teams played very well: you followed the rules and created useful sentences without repeating any content words, so nobody lost any points.

If anybody wants a blank copy of this game in Microsoft Word format and an automatically-updated score sheet, please write to me.

The blank grid for today's game

The completed grid

The completed score sheet

Early Movies 早期電影

If you like movies, maybe you will like to learn about a very interesting Frenchman called Georges Méliès on the Sunday morning blog:

http://cute-sunday-morning.blogspot.com/2011/11/famous-french-people-georges-melies.html

校慶停課一天

提醒同學11月13日是中國科技大學校慶，因此停課一次

Fiction In Action : Whodunit

After our midterm, we will be reading the first story in Fiction In Action : Whodunit, a free-to-share textbook. This book has a Creative Commons license. This means:

1] You can download this book (click on "Download now"), make copies of it and share it with your friends,

BUT

2] you must keep the writers' names on the book (you cannot say that you wrote this book!)
AND
3] you cannot sell it
OR
4] change it

You can learn more about Creative Commons in English, in Standard Chinese or, just for fun, (very briefly) in Bân-lâm-gú (romanized Minnan Dialect 閩南語). 

Whodunit is not completely "free,"  but you can read it first without paying. If you like it, please go back to the download page in January. Use Google Checkout to give the writers some money.

You can pay whenever you want to and you can pay a little ($1~$2) or a bit more ($10~$20). It's up to you. Please encourage the authors.

Your homework is to read and think about Chapter 1 of The Inverted Eagle (pages 4~17) for the main idea. Don't use your dictionary to look up every word. First, just enjoy the story.

"What did she say?"-- How to "Catch" Song Lyrics

Listening to old songs is a pleasant way to learn some new words. Some songs can also help you learn correct rhythm. "Amado Mio" is a lovely song I heard a few weeks ago on the radio. I couldn't understand all of the words, but I wanted to learn this song. Have you ever had this problem?

Here is one way to find the unknown words in a song (= lyrics) and also the name of the song:

1) Find a short phrase (10 words or less) where the words are very clear. In this song, "Love me forever, And let forever begin tonight" is very clear. The last five words are very special.

2) Type the short phrase into Google. Be sure to put quotation marks before and after the phrase. Then add the word lyrics.